Beautiful Once
by Seijoutai Priire
Summary: ~Nightrow once said that Legato had a little sister and that what happened to her had caused his general eeevilness. I speculate that she had been beautiful... (complete)~


_Beautiful Once_

~AN: Nightrow said that he thought Legato had a sister and that was why he was so anti-human and generally eeeevil. I wonder what happened to her? I wonder if she had been beautiful once?~

She had been beautiful, once. That was how he preferred to remember her--not as the broken and abused wreck that most often danced behind his eyes. That was something he saw often, but took less joy in.

She'd been a dancer, too. Her body--limber and petite--was graceful as she defined the smooth movements that made her a favorite with anyone who saw her. 'Watch me, Legato! Watch me!' she called to him, her melodic voice spilling over like pebbles falling out of a jar. 

And he had watched. He watched with his eyes as she leapt into the air, silhouetted by the twin suns of the planet. And he watched in his mind as she was torn apart by the angry ravaging of the humans. They made her into something ugly and repulsive so that even her mother turn away, emptying the contents of her stomach onto the dry sand of Gunsmoke. 

Legato had seen her in his mind, screaming out for his help. He'd thrown down the spoon--still filled with pudding--and started towards the door. He never made it as the meaty hand of his father clenched over his forearm. 'Do not leave those dishes on the table for your mother to clean up! If you're done, thank her and put them in the kitchen.' 

An iron hand--that was what his father ruled with. He could still feel the bruises he tended to wake up with and nurse for weeks. He always took what he was dealt by his father. Today would have been different had the man not led him to the kitchen and struck him with the back of his hand. 

Legato remembered the sharp sting. It was _his_ fault--the fault of that human--that his sister had been torn apart by beings little better than wild animals. Those _humans_. 

She had been so beautiful. He'd loved her, taken care of her, beat her up, told her stories, and did all the other things a good brother was supposed to do. She'd loved him too, in a carefree, beautiful way. She took very little seriously, not even their special gift. He could remember seeing the glint in her eyes as she lifted a stone without touching it, or how she laughed when he had someone lift the stone for him. They would compete like that--she would always win. 

He didn't know how they'd found out--was she too careless once? But it didn't matter. What mattered was that they--the _humans_--were afraid of what she could do. And they tore her apart for it. Her beautiful dancer's body became the vehicle for all sorts of abuses. She'd tried to resist, but she was so young and so afraid. No one had ever attacked her before. Her big brother would have saved her, but another set of humans blocked him. 

He hated them all for her. She would have hated them too, if she'd seen what they'd done to her--the burns, the blood, the ugly marks scarring her skin. Even without closing his eyes, he could see her wide-open frightened orbs, her hair and ears burned almost completely off, her clothes rent by ugly gashes, her blood dripping down her elegantly long fingers and being greedily drunken by the dry sands of Gunsmoke. Her eyes—he remembered them. They were unnaturally huge bulging out of her abused, suddenly ugly face. No one else had been willing to touch her destroyed body so he had gathered her up, holding her together against his white jacket. A hand, severed almost completely draped over his shoulder. Her burned head resting in the crook of his arm. A leg folded up on itself, bending at unnatural points. And they believed they did this for the good of their community. For their protection. He considered laughing at the thoughts he could hear running through their heads. But they wouldn't have understood; humans never did. They were almost laughably entrenched in their own stupidity and bias.

To think that these creatures--pitiful, unworthy things--thought that they and they alone had created **Him**. As if **He** were a thing that they could use--a created tool. He would not be surprised to find that **He** had created them. But could something of such perfection create beings so imperfect and flawed? 

He looked at the hand that he had not been born with and clenched it. She was a pile of bones now, shinning white as the sun caressed what was left of her body. Her bones were as dry as the planet now. Whatever pity he had felt for the pitiful humans had evaporated with the moister from her body and the bodies that he had later laid around her. When he closed his eyes sometimes, he could see her dancing and hear the music that played in the background. Often, it was her final moments the replayed in his mind—set to a slowly painful song with a heavy horn section and light, light clarinet dancing around the thicker melody. Her body flipped around making unnatural bends and twists as she was broken. 'Watch me, Legato! Watch me!'

He watched, letting a soft smile move over his lips as he reveled in the music and ran his fingers over the foreign left hand and thought that it was perhaps like touching **Him**. Only, touching **Him** was like stroking the barrel of a gun--cold, deadly, powerful. Exciting and sickening...and almost like remembering her. 

She had been beautiful...once.

~This story is a recipient of the official Katie Thumbs-UP!: Trigun Fangirl Devision sticker. Tell me if you think I deserved it…or not. ;-) ~


End file.
